Saved by the bill

COVER STORY: How quick thinking and swift political action saved the life of a disabled woman—and rekindled a pro-life movement beaten down by defeat after defeat | Bob Jones

For a pro-life movement worn down by years of judicial losses, Oct. 21 was a day of stunning legislative victories. Two different senates-one in Washington, one in Tallahassee-responded to two chief executives named Bush and voted by lopsided margins to protect life just getting started and nearing its end.

The U.S. Senate's vote to ban partial-birth abortion may save thousands of lives in the long run (see p. 24), but it was the struggle for the life of a single, brain-damaged woman in Florida that riveted the nation's attention.

After five years of legal wrangling and six days of court-ordered starvation, Terri Schiavo finally won a reprieve from the Florida legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush. As an ambulance arrived Tuesday evening to rescue her from the Tampa-area hospice where she was slowly dying, a cheer went up from the 100 or so supporters holding a vigil outside. Many of them had been there six days earlier when a state judge rejected the last of her family's legal appeals and the feeding tube was cut out of her stomach. On that day, a sense of bitter resignation coursed through the crowd: The battle that had dragged on for so many years was over, its lone victim sentenced to death. There seemed to be nothing left to do but watch and wait.